La Damnation de Faust, Glyndebourne, 18 May 2019

Glyndebourne Opera House

Images: Richard Hubert Smith

Faust – Allan Clayton
Méphistophélès – Christopher Purves
Brander – Ashley Riches
Marguerite – Julie Boulianne

Richard Jones (director)

Sarah Fahie (assistant director, choreography)
Hyemi Shin (set design)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Andreas Fuchs (lighting)

Dancers

Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Aidan Oliver)

Glyndebourne Youth Opera

Trinity Boys Choir

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Robin Ticciati (conductor)

There may be a case for staging Berlioz’s ‘dramatic legend’, The Damnation of Faust; it was certainly not made on this occasion. To be fair, here are arguments either way, not least with respect to Berlioz’s own wishes and practice, and there probably always be. This new Glyndebourne production, however, found itself stuck uncertainly, awkwardly, and most of all tediously, between various poles and possibilities. It seemed to lack belief in the work, or at least the wisdom of staging it as it stands, yet at the same time makes changes so half-hearted, arbitrary, and silly that one wishes it had not. Some of Richard Jones’s recent productions – for instance, anon-committal Bohème and a weirdly unfinished Katya Kabanova, both for Covent Garden – have suggested running out of steam; this did nothing to dispel the impression.

 

Much might have been salvaged in the event of a stronger musical performance. Alas, the festival’s music director, Robin Ticciati failed to provide it. I have yet to hear a performance from him that was not at least disappointing. Here, Ticciati offered a masterclass in the perverse art of rendering Berlioz bland and tedious to the point of non-recognition; only the following evening, listening to Colin Davis’s classic Philips LSO recording, did I feel reassured that, yes, I did know the work after all. Such lack of orchestral colour and warmth – the LPO strings sadly wasted through well-nigh absurdist lack of vibrato –married to inability to marry harmony and pulse, on the rare occasion that the latter were discerned, seemed to indicate not so much an æsthetic as mere incompetence. Notes, bars, phrased, paragraphs, even numbers drifted interminably, until suddenly an abrupt, stiff minor – very minor – eruption would occur: quite arbitrary, yet doubtless considered ‘exciting’ by some. Many paths might be taken to ignite the flame of Berlioz’s Romanticism, from Davis to Boulez, from Munch to Markevitch; a prolonged damp squib leading nowhere at all was what we heard here. When it could be heard, the LPO woodwind sounded gorgeous, not least in solo work. Too much, however, was relegated to the status of a dull backing-track to events on stage, such as they were.

 

Singing was better, if often unidiomatic. French is a notoriously difficult language in which to sing, especially for non-Francophone singers, but this was not straightforwardly a matter of nationality. Many of Julie Boulianne’s words were indecipherable, for instance, and she only really came into her own after the interval. Both Christopher Purves and Allan Clayton enunciated far more clearly. If the latter were not ideally cast, straining at the top, there was little doubting his commitment. A few tricky French corners aside, Purves seemed most at home, a sorely needed energising presence. The chorus had a few rocky moments, its female voices in particular; many of the performance’s stronger musical virtues were nevertheless to be found there.

 

What of Jones’s production? It certainly acknowledged the difficulty in staging the work at all, incorporating additional texts, ‘derived from Goethe’s Faust’, by Agathé Mélinand. Derivation, however, was sometimes oblique – not only because they were, oddly, delivered in French. (Surely English translation would have made more sense in this context.) As with much else, I was left feeling that less or (considerably) more would have been better. Having seen Frank Castorf’s Faust (i.e. Goethe) at the Berlin Volksbühne and heard of his work with Gounod’s version, I could not help but find this both non-committal and unfinished. A half-hearted rearrangement, trying to undercut Marguerite’s assumption by following it with ballet music (the ‘Menuet des feux follets’) in which Faust and his devils rejoiced and bared prosthetic genitalia seemed more to proclaim, ‘let us show our feminist credentials’, than actually to do so. Otherwise, a strange domestication, speaking more by default than of conviction, ruled. Presumably the idea was to show an everyday life that might have been Faust’s and Marguerite’s, but never could have been. By all means question, even negate Faust’s – and Berlioz’s – Romantic questing, but it really needs doing with greater verve and belief. This was often as tired as Ticciati’s conducting.

It is difficult to imagine any Berlioz staging of this memorial year matching, let along surpassing, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s magnificiently uncompromising Paris reassessment of The Trojans. If one does, all the better. However, given the uncomprehending hostility with which that met from many, the world seems likely to continue to receive more of what it most likely deserves.

 

R.I.P. Rita Gorr, 1926-2012

La Damnation de Faust: Encore

Those who were interested in my Damnation de Faust review might also be interested in reading a response to its Seen and Heard version (essentially the same, minus a few pictures) from Shahla Tarrant, plus my resply to her. It seems that Shahla Tarrant is a regular collaborator with Terry Gilliam; she is also listed amongst the actors in this production, so can justly claim a different perspective upon it. Click here to read what she had to say.

Other interesting pieces on the production may be found as follows:

Classical Iconoclast, with a fuller piece at Opera Today
Jessica Duchen
Simon Thomas (originally here and, in a more general piece, which refers to my review, here)

La Damnation de Faust, English National Opera, 6 May 2011

The Coliseum

(sung in English, as The Damnation of Faust)

All images: Tristram Kenton
As usual, click images to enlarge.

Faust – Peter Hoare
Marguerite – Christine Rice
Mephistopheles – Christopher Purves
Brander – Nicholas Folwell
Soprano solo – Ella Kirkpatrick

Terry Gilliam (director)
Hildegard Bechtler (set designs)
Katrina Lindsay (costumes)
Peter Mumford (lighting)
Leah Hausman (associate director)
Finn Ross (video)

This was, I am afraid, a self-congratulatory car-crash, from beginning to end. Alarm bells rang when opening the programme to reveal images from the Third Reich. Still louder did they ring when perusing an interview between director Terry Gilliam and Edward Seckerson, in which the former’s grasp of German history was revealed to be at best shaky. Take this passage on the origins of the First World War: ‘The Prussians’ mentality overwhelmed the Romantic side, except the Romantic side was always there in the people.’ The most telling sentence, however was the following: ‘I could have approached The Damnation of Faust by reading a great deal about Berlioz but I avoided that.’ Why bother with Berlioz when one can have Gilliam instead?

So far, so bad, but good things can sometimes come from conceptions that do not necessarily deserve them. Not in this case, alas, for what we have is a (car-)crash course in German history according to Gilliam. Having Faust consider Nature and her renewal in a Caspar David Friedrich landscape (Hildegard Bechtler’s designs were throughout impeccable, when judged on their own merits) is not a bad idea at all, worryingly hackneyed though some of those wondrous Friedrich images have become. (I fear a favourite painter may be going the same way as Klimt or Monet: perhaps it is time for a break.) But all that happens thereafter is a series of irrelevant settings that initially speed through history chronologically – the Marche hongroise a dance for Archduke Franz Ferdinand and moustachioed military men from other nations! – before seemingly becoming stuck in the Third Reich. At the initial rate of change, I wondered whether all might culminate in a panegyric to the euro or Angela Merkel’s apotheosis as vision of the Goethian ‘eternal-feminine’. But no, Gilliam clearly always wanted to be in the Third Reich, and doggedly remains there.

It might have worked, but there is barely even an attempt to make the Nazi ‘entertainment’ – and that, I am afraid is very much how it comes across – connect with the work allegedly being staged. In a brief prologue, Mephistopheles informs us that ‘my struggle can be translated as mein Kampf’. You don’t say? If that is as Faustian as one can render the Third Reich, one might as well give up immediately. Incomprehensibly, large sections of the audience dissolved into hysterical laughter: is translation of a simple phrase really that hilarious? Presumably these were the same people who awarded the director an ecstatic ovation at the end: fans of Terry Gilliam, it would seem, rather than people who might have an interest in La damnation de Faust. Auerbachs Keller sports a poster of Lenin, torn down by brown shirts (of whom Brander is one). The flea song is for some reason treated as anti-Semitic propaganda. (Perhaps, again, it might have been made to work, but it is difficult to discern any attempt.) Berchtesgaden appears and later re-appears. For some reason, out-of-date (even for 1930s Bayreuth) images of Siegfried and Brünnhilde are enacted at a cocktail party; Faust beds down with Brünnhilde. According to Gilliam, ‘I knew I had to have Wagner in the production somewhere: so in the narrative we go to Berchtesgaden.’ Further comment seems superfluous; in any case we have swiftly moved on to a racist depiction of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in which the athletes sport blond (Aryan, you see) wigs. 'Marguerite Oppenheimer' is Jewish, for no apparent reason; her menorah-lit night with Faust takes place against the backdrop of Kristallnacht. Again, Bechtler’s sets are powerful indeed: if only they could have been used for another production, preferably of another work. Jews are deported, Marguerite amongst them. Video trickery that draws attention to itself – however finely accomplished – whisks Faust and Mephistopheles off to a final scene of scarlet kitsch. (That may be partly Goethe's fault: how tiresome Gretchen is, and how relieved one is by her absence from Busoni's Doktor Faust! Nevertheless, the idea that redemption is somehow present in a Holocaust setting is problematical, to say the least.)

I am in no sense opposed to operatic, or other, productions that deal with the period in question, though I should have thought that there were more obvious candidates amongst works than La damnation de Faust. Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal stands, in my experience, in a class of its own, but I was also greatly enlightened by the Cologne Opera’s Capriccio, a powerful production that engaged with the work and its creation (click here to read some related thoughts upon Strauss, with interesting discussion in the comments below). This, however, does no such thing. It veers dangerously close to Springtime for Hitler, albeit without the jokes (or at least the genuine comedy). One could do the same thing with equal justice, or injustice, with or to pretty much any other work, since there is no discernible attempt to engage with Berlioz; it might as well be a Third Reich Barber of Seville. It simply came across as an unholy marriage between a desire to put some Nazi costumes on stage and a racial slur against the Germans, without even a degree of thought having been put into the latter. When Friedrich Meinecke spoke of the ‘German catastrophe’, I do not think it was this sort of catastrophe that he had in mind.

I have said nothing yet about the music, which, sad to say, reflects the apparent priorities of the evening. Berlioz’s score was apparently reduced to the status of a film track to an entirely different drama, such as it was. It was not helped by often lacklustre conducting by Edward Gardner. Gardner’s initially downright insipid reading seemed relatively invigorated after the interval, but Berlioz’s extraordinary nervous energy often went for nothing, sounding closer to Massenet than Berlioz as we have come to know him from a conductor such as Sir Colin Davis. The ENO Orchestra was, however, on very good form, when considered apart from its direction, likewise the choral forces amassed. Christopher Purves’s Mephistopheles stood out amongst the singers. Purves exhibited strong stage presence and, with the odd exception, equally fine vocal presence. Peter Hoare seemed to be trying his best as Faust, but was hamstrung both by his too-youthful-mad-scientist look, and by miscasting. He often struggled, especially at the upper reaches of the range; memories of Nicolai Gedda did not help. Christine Rice proved a solid enough Marguerite, though she could not conceal what was lost by translation into English. (If it must be done, it might as well be done by a Berlioz scholar such as Hugh Macdonald, though I was surprised at the number of forced rhymes: ‘tender’, ‘surrender’, and ‘splendour’, for instance.)

Whether Berlioz’s légende dramatique was a wise choice to stage at all might have seemed more of a question with a more convincing staging. There are, after all, three operas by the composer, but ENO is not alone in its curious desire to stage works that were never intended to be staged. ENO’s own recent Messiah springs to mind. Sometimes that can work; here, alas, Berlioz was never given a chance. I cannot imagine anyone encountering his music for the first time having been encouraged to explore its riches further. There is no harm in principle in staging La damnation de Faust; it has been done many times before, and I should have loved to see, for instance, what La Fura del Baus did with it in Salzburg. (There is a DVD, though I have not seen it.) Next time, however, let it be Sir Colin, the LSO, and the bare walls of the Barbican.